catching up
It’s been a week now since our return to the United States. I hear me missed a cold snap in Amsterdam that’s been nothing shy of miserable. When we landed in New York (by way of Madrid) we were dressed for the cold that we’d grown accustomed to in Amsterdam and found ourselves with the immediate need to shed layers. We dropped off our luggage, redressed for the weather and headed out to find food (and some much needed whiskey); as it were, that’s all we had the energy for and we spent our night in New York city trying to recover from a long day of travel.
It’s been a week now and I’m having a hard time adjusting to the time difference. I’ve traveled extensively and usually right my jet lag in a day or two, but despite the fact that I’m nine hours behind, my body will not give up on the belief that I’m still in Amsterdam.
tot ziens
Yesterday was a day of goodbye’s for us; we met up with Ryan and Nicole in de Pijp. They are fellow Detroiters that we met here thanks to mutual friends back home and during our time here in Amsterdam we’ve definitely come to enjoy their company. We thought perhaps their trip back to the States would interfere with our getting to see them before we left, but luckily that wasn’t so and we got to say goodbye last night with farewell drinks at O’Donnell’s; it seemed appropriate since that’s where we met the first time.
In Amsterdam, language has held us back ever so slightly from making new friends; not in a way that is tragic by any means, but enough so that the few people we’ve gotten to know here will hold a significant place in our memories of the time we spent here. I don’t have any doubt that if we’d have stayed longer we’d have gotten to be good friends with many more of the regular faces in our neighborhood, but we were here just long enough to not be seen as tourists before it was time for us to go.
The people at Bij Kees are an example of this; we’ve just started to get to know them, but we have enough so that we felt that we should say goodbye. We stopped in for a drink, happy that our favorite bartender was working and the owner (Kees) was there as well. Our favorite seats (tucked away at the corner of the bar) were empty, so we took them. She greeted us warmly, stopping what she was doing to pull the bottle of Jameson from its place without our having to ask. She had people to tend to in the dining room upstairs so we speculated on the life of the house cat that sat sleepily on one of the shelves while we waited for her to return. We she did, we asked her about the trip to Switzerland which she’d been excited about going on when we last saw her and she was very happy that we’d remembered.
Kees came out limping and when we inquired about it, he told us the story about how he’d stepped on a broken wine glass and it had penetrated his shoe and deep into his foot. Insult had been added to his injury in that it had been dropped into the street by one of his friends, who he’d given the glass to take with him from the restaurant when he left. He sat down next to us to finish the telling of it and ended up drinking with us for the rest of the evening.
We talked about our travels to different places in the world, particularly the ones we had in common; Kees had visited New Orleans a number of times and had been to Las Vegas as well. The bartender had been to Detroit for one day to perform in a theater there on a tour. We talked about Amsterdam as well; what we all loved about it the most and what we didn’t care for (for us it’s definitely the reckless scooter and bike riders). They told us that Amsterdam is a wonderful place in the summer and that we should stay or at very least come back again then.
We had the sort of night that we wanted (needed) as we prepare to leave Amsterdam. In the circumstances that have led up to us deciding to return to the States, it would have been easy for us to become frustrated or disenchanted and to have missed out on the value on what was left of our time. Instead, we had one last night of real living in Amsterdam and it made me appreciate this experience even more.
Like this:
Time
When we packed up our things, sold what we couldn’t move and said goodbye to New Orleans, we came to the Netherlands with the understanding that we only had a limited time to make our tourist visa’s become residence. There were many moving parts, all of which had to work with precision to allow us to stay legitimately. There are sponsorships and permits, registrations and permissions. There are insurances and leases and bottom lines. There are all sort of things, including opportunity, which made us decide to try living here in the first place and five times as many things that had to happen in order for it to be possible.
One of the most important pieces of that puzzle is that R. would have to find auditions so that she could land a part with a dance company or teaching. We arrived in the Netherlands after the arts budget received a huge cut, which means that while this time last year there were plenty of viable auditions, this year there’s been only one and it’s scheduled for the day before our visa’s expire.
Another very important part was that I needed to resume shooting and editing as soon as we hit the ground so that I could support the two of us while the audition process rolled out for R. With one lost hard drive (it vanished on the trip over) and it’s backup being damaged in shipping, I haven’t had any of my material to edit. When my camera was stolen on our trip to Paris, I lost the ability to shoot until I had procured a replacement; it was an unexpected expense that I had no choice but to deal with. In short, I had a perfect storm of technological bad luck.
So here we are; at the end of our visas, having made the decision to leave Amsterdam. We’d rather take a step back and come at it again with better footing than overstay the amount of time we are allowed here and thus be denied residency when we return. There are other factors involved as well, but that’s the gist of it. It’s not the ideal decision; it’s one we always knew we might have to make, but we wanted to try and so we did and we are happier for our time spent here in Amsterdam.
We have a few weeks left here and we intend to make the most of it. We’ll walk the streets, take photographs, visit museums and parks and markets that we’ll miss when we are gone. We’ll eat pannenkoeken and erwtensoep every chance that we have. We’ll keep trying to get the dutch phrases that we know just right. At the end of the month, we’ll head back to the states, but we’ll take a little of Holland with us wherever we go and we’ll almost undoubtedly leave a little piece of us behind.
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Getting around
Finding a way to get around in Amsterdam isn’t difficult. You can take a bike or boat or trains. Taxis and pedicabs will deliver you directly to your doorstep. Really though, i find Amsterdam to be a pretty walkable city (weather permitting, of course).
There are roads and sidewalks and bike paths, but don’t worry about trying to make sense of where you need to be as these seem more like a suggestion than a rule. When learning to avoid bikes on the sidewalk, you get an idea of what it must have been like when horses rode through the middle of town in the days of the wild west. We once stepped around a Canta, which was left outside of the entrance to the metro (it’s probably much quicker to take the train) and narrowly avoided being run down by a bike; all without ever leaving the sidewalk. The only vehicles that hold predictable courses here are the ones that are on tracks.
I’m admittedly not a fan of bike culture, but that comes from years spent in New Orleans where I’ve seen people get a DUI because they were too intoxicated to be allowed wheels. In the middle of a sunny afternoon, I stood on the sidewalk of a one-way street waiting for a tour group to wander past when a day-drunk dirt kid plowed me from behind, costing me the packages in my arms, my sunglasses and a bit of blood. He scurried away, cursing me for standing on the sidewalk.
When we moved to Amsterdam, I had the wide eyed optimism of a man who believes that a difference in geography will mean a better bicycle culture. I tried, friends, to like the idea of bikes in Amsterdam but their unyielding, aggressive use of any paved surface and the often unpredictability of the direction they are headed in have broken me of that optimism and I’ve decided that while it’s nice not to have the city clogged with cars, I wish more people would just take trains.
With the exception of the canal tours, I haven’t ridden on boats here very often. I’m envious of the people I see out on the canals during sunny days and houseboats certainly hold their appeal. It’s probably the kid in me that likes the idea of your home being able to take you places, but it I were going to buy property, I’d have to be talked down from something like this:
The train system here seems reasonably efficient. It cleaner than the ones in Paris or New York, easier to navigate than the one in Chicago and definitely more useful than Detroit’s Peoplemover (which runs in only one direction around downtown). There are above and below ground trains all of which you can find access to within a few blocks of most of the places in the centruum. I found Montreal’s Metro to be likeable, but ultimately I favor the Amsterdam system…with the exception of the moments where I’ve nearly been run over by bikes coming on and off the train.
My first choice when going anywhere is to walk. I prefer to be above ground, looking at everything while I make my way from place to place. I like to look at houses and boats and people, and yes; even bikes. The trains take you where you need to go, but they always get there the same way. They don’t allow a last minute decision to see what’s down a new street or stop to look through a window. I like the feeling of the pavement under my feet and I love rise and fall of the streets as they cross over the water that passes beneath them. I like the sun on my face (when we have it) and I’d rather be walking than waiting for a train. I may, however, start using a bell when I cross streets.
Like this:
Eat
Every place I live or visit, I find food that reminds me intrinsically of where I was when I appreciated it the most. I’ll eat something that perhaps isn’t even a good example of local cuisine and somehow in my head, it becomes what a place tastes like. New Orleans now tastes to me like oysters from Lüke. Paris tastes to me like the macaroons from Ladurée. Michigan will always be apple donuts from the Paint Creek Cider Mill. Whenever I think of these places, of the food that I want when I visit, this is what I think of.
The other day we had lunch at the Old Bell and while eating a bit of the erwtensoep ( dutch pea soup) that Robyn had ordered, I placed what the taste made me think of; it reminded me of the smokiness of a wood burning stove and made me think of cutting down our own Christmas tree as a teenager. Erwtensoep isn’t something that I order myself (I usually choose the French Onion), but I realized that it was going to be the taste that would make me think of Amsterdam because it made me think. A few bites in and we were switching bowls so we could share both.
I was in the restaurant business on and off for years, including owning two of them. My favorite part of being a restaurateur was definitely coming up with new items for the menu. I took a pride in the food and found it frustrating if anyone else in the kitchen didn’t. One of the greatest compliments that I ever got was from my friend Brian, who told me years later that he could always tell when I was in the kitchen because the food tasted like it had a little more love in it. As a diner, my food doesn’t need to be expensive or complicated; what I appreciate the most is when it tastes like a little love (or at least pride) went into making it.
We were in the Latin Quarter of Paris, waiting one night outside for crêpes. We’d given our order and the man who had taken it went to work making them for us. He poured the batter onto the hot plate, running circles with the spreader until the crêpe came right to the edge of the surface it was being cooked on. The man making it wasn’t satisfied with it, so he pulled it off the grill, put it on a little plate and set it aside, before starting a new one. I probably wouldn’t have known the difference if he’d given me the first one he’d made, but he would have. It was a cold night and I was ready to be back at the hotel, but watching him take pride in such a simple thing, I didn’t mind the wait.
Before I moved here, I thought it would be the pannekoeken that I’d come to think of Amsterdam as. I order them often, crave them on a regular basis, but they aren’t the taste that make me feel like I’m really here, living in Amsterdam, like I’ve wanted to for so long. It isn’t the vlaamse frites in their handy little cone, dripped with ketchup and mayonnaise that I think of most often. It isn’t any of the steaks, or sandwiches, baked goods or pasta’s that I’ve eaten that have made me feel like this is my home. It’s something simple, something that in my younger years I didn’t even really care for, but now it tastes like home.
Like this:
Yelp
